Our View: If you’re tired of high property taxes, speak up

Most of us went into sticker shock when we opened our property tax bills. We pay THAT much for THIS house in THIS city? By the time our blood pressures returned to normal, it was too late to have an effect on that bill.

Most of us went into sticker shock when we opened our property tax bills. We pay THAT much for THIS house in THIS city? By the time our blood pressures returned to normal, it was too late to have an effect on that bill.

You can protest your assessment, but the key to lowering your tax bill is to attend a meeting of a taxing body when it gets ready to set its levy.

The levy is the amount of property taxes a local government or school district wants to collect. Those government entities usually want more of your money. They have to pay employees, pick up health insurance and other stuff with your tax dollars.

Those levies are set at meetings from late September to December. State law requires each taxing body to submit the levy to the county clerk by the last Tuesday in December. This year, that’s New Year’s Eve. Boards can make their property tax request anytime until then.

Your tax bill can stay level, even if the levy rises, if the value of new construction offsets the requested increase. That hasn’t been happening in northern Illinois.

The meetings where levies are set tend to be sparsely attended by the public. Most people don’t understand the process well enough to speak up when it can make a difference. They get too caught up in tax rates rather than levies. The county clerk’s office typically calculates the tax rates in April, after it has received levy requests from all taxing bodies and assessment challenges have been heard by the Board of Review in each county.

Winnebago County has 86 taxing bodies. Last year, 52 increased the levy, and you probably didn’t hear or read much about the decisions to increase those levies. In Boone County, 35 of 51 taxing bodies sought more property tax dollars than they got the previous year.

You may wonder how this can happen when Winnebago and Boone counties are under tax caps. The Property Tax Extension Limitation Law, passed here in 1996, limits taxing entities to increases of 5 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower. Most taxing entities have taken the maximum they are allowed under the law. This year the rate of inflation is 1.7 percent.

The law went into effect when the housing market was booming and was meant to slow tax increases. No one foresaw a time when property values would decline and the law could be used to raise taxes, but that’s what happened.

No one can attend the meetings of all the units of government in a county, but you can choose which entity you think needs to hold the line on taxes.

Page 2 of 2 -
Some increases may be justified. Schools take most of our property tax dollars, but the money spent there is an investment in the future. If you think it’s a worthy investment say so; if not, speak out.

Governments that held the line on taxes should be given credit. Rockford School District, for example, recently announced that it would keep its levy the same. Last year it lowered its levy by $16 million, which led to 67 percent of Rockford homeowners paying less on their property tax bills, according to the supervisor of assessments.

Winnebago County’s levy has been flat for three years. The County Board considered a slight increase Thursday that would cost the owner of a $100,000 house less than $3 a year. County leaders have made millions of dollars in cuts in the past three years and the county still delivers a high level of service.

The tax process is complicated, but most property owners only care about what they will have to pay. If you think it’s too much, now’s the time to say something.